


Blackboard Painting in the Dead of Night

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1874817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas thinks that the school's latest idea of getting students to write their thoughts on a huge, public blackboard is... well, black-boring, until someone replies to his angry scribbling. Several bad puns and some Kant quotations later, Cas may finally meet the mysterious messenger who anonymously turned his life upside-down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackboard Painting in the Dead of Night

Cas stood in front of the wall, a piece of chalk in his hand.

“Write something, anything that comes into your head. A quote, a thought, a word. The idea of this project is for you all to get something off your mind, it’s up to you what that is.” Missouri walked along the corridor, which had an entire wall that was lacquered to a dark shine, perfect for erasable writing. “We’re going to be cleaning the blackboard every few days, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Cas studied the wall. He could see where other students had already scribbled things – their names, their numbers, with a few words of borrowed wisdom here and there. It all seemed so completely useless. No one would want to read what he wrote; no one was interested in his ideas. His professors seemed to barely notice him, and his classmates even less so. Small wonder, Cas thought bitterly. With his brown hair and conservative dress, he was hardly memorable.

“Write something, Castiel,” Missouri said gently as she passed behind him. Cas scowled.

 _What’s the point?_ he scrawled in angry blue capitals. It was overemotional, angsty, and rather pathetic – but Cas didn’t care. It wasn’t as though he could come up with anything better. He turned away from the wall and headed towards the lunch room.

**

The next day, Cas was walking to class and had to pass by the Blackboard Wall. He glanced at the hundreds of entries, automatically searching for his own addition; when he found it, he frowned. Underneath his outburst, someone had written,

_The sharp end._

Cas ran his fingers lightly over the green-chalked words, rubbing the residue between the tips thoughtfully. Who had replied to him? Were they being funny or mocking? Should he leave it, or could he reply? There were sticks of chalk in a pot to one side of the wall; checking to make sure that he wasn’t observed, Cas picked his blue one up and scribbled,

 _What acute definition._  He looked at the words for a long time, battling the urge to wipe them away and run. It was just a bit of fun, he told himself. No big deal. Maybe he’d make someone laugh.

“Never going to happen,” he muttered to himself as he pushed open the door to the classroom.

“If you’re talking about passing my class, you’d be about right, Castiel,” Mr Singer said gruffly, “unless you start turning up on time.”

Cas tried his best not to care, pulling his best unbothered face and hoping fervently that he wasn’t blushing. He took his seat.

“Hey, Winchester. You going to the dance?”

Cas turned his head slightly. Dean Winchester was sitting in the row behind him, leaning his chair back on two legs and smiling lazily.

“Sure,” he said comfortably. “You?”

“If I can get a date,” said his interlocutor, a small, skinny boy who Cas thought might be called Harry.

“There’s only two weeks left, dude. We have to start lowering our expectations at this point,” said the blond guy, Ed, sitting to Dean’s left.

“Relax, boys,” Dean said, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders. “Plenty of time left.”

“Easy for you to say, Mr Art Genius,” Harry said nervously.

“Yeah, we can’t all paint one picture and have any girl in the school falling into our arms.”

Was Cas imagining the way Dean’s smile seemed to freeze? Dean glanced Cas’ way, and met his eyes; Cas turned around quickly, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping by the most popular guy in his class. Dean was always nice enough, but there was no way Cas could talk to him. He’d make a complete fool of himself. It wasn’t that he was shy – Cas had no problems talking to strangers – it was just that Cas knew that he wasn’t especially interesting, intelligent, or funny. There was no way Dean would want to talk with him.

That evening, when all of Cas’ classes were done, he went back to look at the Blackboard Wall. Under his own blue-chalk reply, someone had written,

_I am a keen observer._

Cas thought the underlining was overdoing it a touch.

He still found himself smiling all the way home, for the first time in a long time.

**

Three days later, Cas was standing in front of the wall again, blue chalk in hand. He turned it over and over, leaving a thick layer of cerulean shine on his palm.

“Anything you can think of, Castiel,” said Missouri patiently. Cas swallowed. He was trying hard not to admit it to himself, but he wanted to write something that would tempt his replier into conversation again. He attempted to shake the thought off. One person chalked up a message to him on a blackboard, and suddenly he was trying to think of ways to lure them back in? Pathetic.

“Don’t think too hard, Castiel,” said the black boy on Cas’ left, Gordon. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

A stock insult, lacking creativity. Cas had heard it a thousand times.

 _Life is boring_ , he wrote on the wall. Once again, embarrassingly cliché – but that had worked last time, Cas reasoned.

Not that it mattered. Cas didn’t care if the person replied again. It wasn’t important;  _he_ wasn’t important. He was a nobody, and if nobody answered him, well – that would just be perfectly fitting.

**

The boys had avoided Cas in the changing rooms ever since he’d come out, but today had been worse than most. Gordon had stolen his towel and used it to dry himself off, before throwing it back and saying,

“You like it better that way, right, Castiel?”

Cas felt the anger inside him, wound up tight like a metal spring, rusty after all this time and screeching with the injustice. He found his feet leading him to the Blackboard Wall, thinking that he could use a place to vent – and, seeing as he was here anyway, he might as well check to see if any green-chalk letters had appeared under his own question…

 _wow, you must really like drilling holes_ , read the response. Cas stared at it with his head on one side for a few seconds before he got it. Obscure, he thought. A thin, dainty sparkle of happiness wound its way up his spine, slow and silver, as unexpected as it was unfamiliar. Cas stepped back from the wall; he’d reply tomorrow. He didn’t want to seem too keen.

**

The next day, Cas turned up to add his answer to Green on the blackboard, but saw with a swooping flare of jealousy that someone else had already replied – one of Green’s friends, perhaps? He read the first two lines of the conversation over again, before moving on to the crude, yellow lettering beneath:

_Life is boring._

_wow, you must really like drilling holes_

_More like drilling other dudes._

Cas felt his stomach drop three hundred feet. He stared at the words, jaw clenched, a fierce flush blazing on his cheeks and down his neck, his fingers quivering with rage. He knew who had done this – only one boy disliked him enough, whilst at the same time knowing he’d been the original writer.

Cas wondered what Green would make of this – or  _had_ made of it, Cas thought to himself. Perhaps Green had seen the reply and realised who he was talking to. Maybe there would be no more green messages.

When Cas finally emerged from the bathrooms an hour later, however, the first thing he saw was a new addition to the conversation, written in livid emerald chalk.

 _huh, I see you even brought a tool_ , read the message.

It didn’t help at first, because Cas was too wrapped in his familiar blanket of misery to allow the words to penetrate. They lingered in his mind, though, like a far-off sun, begging him to shed the shroud and come out to share the warmth.

**

The next time Cas was standing in front of the wall, he was having one of those days where melancholy rainclouds seemed to be following him alone, leaving a fine drizzle of gloom over everything he touched. He sighed, and tried to shake off his bad mood. It would be alright, he thought to himself. He’d come out the other side of this.

 _Is there a greater purpose?_ he wrote up on the wall, slowly and carefully this time, with the chalk leaving blue powder on the tips of his sensible shoes as though he’d gone walking with tiny cornflower-pollen fairies.

Cas’ despondent miasma didn’t lift all day; it only increased when Dean Winchester caught his eye in the corridor. He smiled, but Cas had already turned away quickly; in his peripheral vision, he saw Dean’s grin fade as he walked away. Cas bumped his head softly against the door of his locker, trying to find a sense of calm in the cool, hard edge pressed against his brow.

He didn’t check the Blackboard Wall that evening. He wasn’t willing to risk his own disappointment if Green hadn’t replied.

**

The next morning was better. Cas woke up and cleaned his teeth, enjoying the fresh, clean taste of peppermint on his tongue, allowing the new day to blow away some of the sticky grey cobwebs that had been festooning the darkened hallways of his mind. For the first time in a long time, Cas wished that he had someone to talk to.

He arrived at school early and purposefully made his way over to the Blackboard Wall, the washed-linen sunlight trailing fondly over his shoulders and down his back as he walked.

Green had written to him; he’d scrubbed out the word  _purpose_ in Cas’ sentence and replaced it.

 _Is there a greater porpoise?_ the question now read, and Green had replied,

_Most dolphinately, there is._

Someone else had doodled a red heart to the left of the message, and white spidery writing on the other side read,

_Get a room already!!_

Cas picked up his blue chalk, smiling to himself, feeling bubbles of joy building in his chest; he felt like a champagne bottle being shaken, ready to be uncorked, waiting to explode.

 _Oh, whale done,_ he wrote. It didn’t look like enough, though, just three words. He’d put something else, something more personal, an endearing insult, maybe.  _Moron. Ass. Dumbass._ He tried writing all of them, but rubbed them out quickly. They didn’t quite work. _Ass…butt._

“Assbutt,” Cas said to himself, and wrote it on the wall, over the top of the other badly scrubbed-out insults. It seemed to roll off his tongue, somehow.

This time, he tucked the blue piece of chalk in his pocket as he left.

**

Nothing. For three days, absolutely nothing. It was an embarrassment, a kind of blunt torture, as though someone were constantly holding a pillow against his nose and mouth, keeping him on the edge of suffocation, making his strung-out lungs ache.

“You know those two people who’ve been writing on the Blackboard? They totally broke up,” Cas heard one girl telling another in the corridor.

“What? They were so cute!”

“The blue one called the green one this lame insult, and then the green one wouldn’t reply! They’ve got a fresh board today, I wonder if blue will ask another question?”

“Does anyone even know who they are?”

“Nobody except them. Maybe not even them, who knows? It sucks, I liked those messages they were sending,” the first girl said as she disappeared around a corner with her friend in tow.

Cas drew his chalk out of his pocket. The corridor was deserted. He was tired of rumour, and speculation. He wanted very badly to ask Green about their appearance, something that he was intensely curious about; however, he felt that he had probably disappointed Green enough recently, and decided to shelve his interest. Green had shown no inclination to meet, and neither would he – but what if Green was thinking exactly the same thing, and waiting for him to make the first move? Cas sighed.

 _What’s the truth?_ he wrote in small, uncertain letters, and he stared at the message for a few moments before moving away.

**

Cas heard about Green’s reply before he saw it.

“… on the Blackboard Wall…”

“… those two people who’ve been…”

“… Kant!”

“… not sure about the part where…”

“… reference back to the old…”

Cas frowned, and walked as fast as he could to the board, breaking into a run as he rounded the last corner. He stood and stared in confusion. At least a third of the wall was taken up by the familiar round, green letters.

 _Truth, from the old English,_ tríewþ.  _It means ‘in accordance with fact or reality.’ People have argued for a long time about what truth means. Kant said that the nominal definition of truth - as in, what you think something is corresponding exactly with what it is - is not a good enough test of whether or not something is true. This is because when we are making that comparison, both sides are based on our own perception; we’re basically comparing what we think something is to what we think something is, since we can’t ever be objective, it’s impossible to know if something is true. We can only know if it is true for us. On the other hand, Hegel said that…_

The paragraph went on, speaking of Hegel’s idea of a perfect truth, Schopenhauer’s dichotomy of logical and transcendental truths, Nietzsche’s moral questions on the use of truth. At the end, in bold, defiant letters, were the words,

_So there. Not really a moron, ass, or dumbass. Maybe an assbutt, though. Wipe out your insults properly next time ;)_

Cas read the whole thing through several times, chewing his lip. Despite the crowd of students, he took out his chalk and walked up to the wall. The people around him went quiet, and the hush spread down the corridor like a rolling wave, expectant, ready to break.

Cas hesitated, and then wrote,

_…oh._

And then he left.

**

It was Castiel’s worst day in a long time. He hadn’t even met Green once in his whole life – not knowingly, at least – and he’d still managed to ruin it, and upset his potential new friend. It was almost unbelievable, the scope of Cas’ talent for screwing things up so consistently.

The early evening found him wending his way towards the Blackboard. He wanted to read the message again, perhaps hoping to find some kind of hidden message, a joke, a light-hearted comment that he’d missed earlier in all the kerfuffle; something that would indicate that Green didn’t hate him too terribly, however much he might deserve it.

When Cas arrived at the right corridor, there was someone else squatting down by the end of the message, turning a piece of chalk over in their hand. They were brown-haired, wearing a battered old leather jacket and ripped jeans.

It was Dean Winchester. And he was holding a piece of green chalk.

“Green?” Cas asked disbelievingly. Dean looked up quickly, eyes wide with surprise; he obviously hadn’t heard Cas approaching.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said. “How’s it going?”

“What are you doing?” Cas demanded, ignoring the polite inquiry. Dean flipped the chalk up in his hand, and caught it with a grin.

“What’s it look like?” he said. “Leaving a message for my favourite anonymous questioner.”

“Favourite?” Cas said blankly. “Is that sarcastic? I insulted you.”

“You…?” Cas watched it sink in, waiting for an expression of disappointment to appear on Dean’s face that never came. Instead, he looked excited. “You! You’re Blue? I really have been writing to you?”

“Yes,” Cas said stiffly. Dean reined back, looking a touch embarrassed.

“Well, I mean, it was just a few jokes and stuff, no big.”

“I didn’t think it would be anything more,” Cas said sharply. Dean’s expression turned quizzical.

“And why shouldn’t it be?” he demanded. Cas scowled.

“As if you would pay attention to me. I’m boring. I whine and I complain and I always – I always feel as if I were carrying a cloud over me. I’m not worth anything much,” Cas said simply, without self-pity. “You’re something else, Dean. You deserve better from your friends.”

Dean’s confusion had darkened as Cas had been talking. He stepped closer to Cas, waving his chalk.

“You stop talking about yourself like that,” he said sternly. “You stop it, you hear?”

Cas shrugged awkwardly.

“It’s true,” he said, trying not to sound churlish, chewing the inside of his cheek. “I’m the person no one pays attention to.”

“That’s not true,” Dean said. “Not Kant’s kind of true, or Hegel’s, or anyone's. That’s just plain wrong, and you know what?” Dean put down his stick of chalk and started walking away, “I’m going to prove it to you.”

Cas watched him walk away, each beat of his heart like a thunderclap.

**

“Did you see it?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I knew Dean was good, but…”

The voices broke off as soon as Cas drew near. He was used to that, but the mention of Dean made him curious.

“What’s happened?” he asked Harry and Ed as they passed. The two shared a conspiratorial glance.

“Dude,” Ed said, “you have  _got_ to go check out the Blackboard Wall. Dean’s…”

“… yeah, we don’t really know how to sum it up,” Harry finished. “You’d better see for yourself.”

Cas walked very, very slowly to the corridor with the shiny Blackboard Wall. Dare he hope, dare he even consider that it could be something good? Dean had said…

He shook himself. Good things didn’t happen to him. In general, he happened to good things, and made them not all that good any more.

Before rounding the last corner, Cas took a deep breath. He could hear the mutters and giggles of a large crowd; he wished, suddenly, that Dean were there with him. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and moved.

And gasped.

On the wall, drawn in chalk, was his own face – not just once, but at least twelve different versions, each one with a different expression. Cas saw sad, first, and anxious, and bored… but then he kept looking, and there was happy, there, too, a smile lifting his lips… and there, excited, an expression he made so rarely that he was astonished it had been captured so well… to the furthest left, there was a Cas with a strange expression on his face: light-eyed, wonderingly curious, hopeful and intense. Walking up to it, Cas raised a finger to touch the lapel of his chalk-drawn jacket.

“Cas?”

At the sound of Dean’s voice, Cas spun around and watched Dean coming closer. He heard the crowd around him take a short, sharp intake of breath as one, and looked around at them questioningly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, confused.

“It’s your face,” Dean replied. “I mean, nothing’s wrong with your face. It’s just, that’s how you look right now.” He pointed to the far left picture above where Cas was standing. “That’s… that’s what you look like when you see me.”

Cas looked back at the picture. Suddenly he felt vulnerable, as though all of his emotions were on show. His long-term crush was now chalked up on the wall for anyone with half a brain to see. His eyes began to flit left and right, searching for an escape route.

“I didn’t mean… I’m sorry,” Cas said. “I won’t talk to you again. You don’t have to…”

Dean was looking utterly confused.

“Cas, I did this for you,” he said gruffly, taking Cas by the shoulders and spinning him around, speaking over his shoulder. “You said no one pays attention? I do. I like you, and I know you’ve got the whole solitary thing going and I’ve been kind of intimidated by that…”

“You’ve been intimidated by me?” Cas repeated, wondering suddenly if this were an elaborate joke.

“Yeah, man. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to talk to you for ages, but you always seem to blow me off.”

Cas remembered shutting down Dean’s glance in the hallway the other day.

“It’s not because I don’t like you,” he said in a quiet voice. “It’s because I don’t like me.”

“ _I_ like you,” Dean said spiritedly. “Don’t question my judgement. Now, repeat after me. I am awesome.”

“I… am awesome,” Cas said reluctantly. Dean moved around so that he was standing in front of Cas again, one hand on his arm in a relaxed, easy touch.

“I am intelligent.”

“I am intelligent?”

Dean nodded.

“I have excellent hair.”

“I have excellent hair,” Cas said, feeling suddenly conscious of it. He supposed he did quite like the way it looked, on a good day.

“I have beautiful eyes,” Dean said.

“I have beautiful eyes.”

“I have cheekbones which are very difficult to draw.”

“I have cheekbones which are very difficult to draw. Because it is hard to capture this much fabulous,” Cas added cheekily, ducking his head and smiling. Dean grinned, tucked one finger under Cas’ chin and looked at him, green eyes lit like sunlight through forest leaves.

“I am thoughtful.”

“I am thoughtful,” Cas repeated.

“I am going to the dance this weekend with Dean Winchester.”

Cas looked up at Dean through his eyelashes, hardly daring to believe it.

“M-me?” he stammered. When Dean raised an eyebrow, he corrected himself. “Me. Yes, me. Me! I mean, yes! Yes, Dean,” he said in a glorious rush, throwing his arms around Dean’s neck, crashing their heads together a little as they pulled close.

“I am going to dance with Dean all night,” Dean murmured, “because he’s not going to be able to keep his eyes off me.”

Cas hummed, deep in his throat.

**

The dance was as tacky and terrible as any high-school dance ever has been. The music was obnoxious and outdated; the drinks were soft and tasteless; the students were rowdy and boisterous.

Cas had never enjoyed an evening so much in his life.

With their arms looped around each other, Dean and Cas had carved themselves out a circle of calm. They spun slowly, rocking from side to side in time with the beat of the music. The coloured glitterball over their heads sent diamond lights skittering down over their faces and clothes, made opals of their eyes.

“So, how’s the existential crisis?” Dean asked conversationally, his fingers twisting a lock of Cas’ dark hair round and round at the back of his neck, sending shivers up Cas’ spine. Cas moved closer, shifting himself so that they were pressed tight against each other.

“Mm, better,” Cas said. He leaned forward, rested his forehead against Dean’s.

“You don’t find yourself wondering, what’s the point?”

Cas smiled.

“It’s the sharp end,” he replied. Dean chuckled and leaned down, so that their lips were almost touching. Cas could feel the tingle of Dean’s breath, could almost taste his mouth, sweet with punch.

“I like you, Cas,” Dean said, his voice low.

“I like you, Dean,” Cas replied. “And… and I like me, too.”

Dean’s kiss was smooth and sudden, a glorious electric shock that fused Cas’ brain, sent short-circuiting flickers up and down his body. Dean’s lips were so soft, so perfect against his own, he wanted to kiss them forever – and when he opened his mouth slightly, Dean responded, slipping his tongue lightly over Cas’ bottom lip, pulling it back. Cas chased it, kissing Dean deeply and soundly, making little unconscious noises of appreciation which Dean echoed, lower and rougher, starting up a fast, roaring fire in Cas’ chest. When Dean finally pulled back, Cas pressed a few small, chaste kisses to his smooth cheeks, one just under his lower lip, one on the tip of his nose. They danced all night, just like Dean had said they would.

The next morning, the Blackboard Wall had been cleaned of Dean’s pictures.

“It’s OK,” Dean said to Cas, who wished that they could’ve taken a picture. “They weren’t perfect, anyway. There were still some sad ones in there. Once they’ve been gone a while, and I only remember all your different happy faces, then I’ll put you on the Wall again.”

Cas smiled. With Dean beside him, he was sure those days were not far away.


End file.
